Austin Texas Community

How would you like a job that pays roughly $30,000 a month and requires no documented work output? That's the kind of gig two longtime associates of Interim City Manager Jesús Garza and Mayor Kirk Watson landed this year, without competition from other candidates. From February to July, each was paid roughly $150,000 in taxpayer dollars to provide vaguely defined consulting services through subcontracts that were not approved by City Council – even though that amount of money usually requires Council authorization. The two consultants – Laura Huffman and Joe Canales – are on track to end the year as two of the highest-paid workers at City Hall (though as outside consultants, they don't get benefits offered to full-time employees, such as health care). At the rate the pair has been billing, each could make more than $420,000 by year's end – an annualized rate that exceeds that paid to Garza ($350,000) and approaches that paid to Austin Energy General Manager Robert Kahn ($475,009), the city's two highest-paid full-time workers.